Edwin and Karlee Bradberry Chair, Information Systems, and Executive Director of the Information Technology Research Institute, Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas
The information technology professional is regularly expected to work with colleagues in both IT and other areas of the organization. During these interactions, the IT employee is expected to conform to occupational or organizational norms regarding the display of emotion. How do these display norms affect the IT professional? This study examines an IT professional's emotional dissonance, the conflict between norms of emotional display and an employee's felt emotion. Emotional dissonance is studied as a factor of IT professionals' work exhaustion, job satisfaction, and turnover intention, modeled as an extension to the work of Moore (2000a). The results indicate emotional dissonance predicts work exhaustion better than do perceived workload, role conflict, or role ambiguity, constructs which have long been associated with work exhaustion. Job satisfaction is influenced directly by role ambiguity and work exhaustion. In turn, job satisfaction influences employee turnover intention. We discuss implications of these findings for both IT management and future research.
Information systems professionals increasingly face changes in their work environment. Some of these changes are incremental, but many require fundamental shifts in mindset (referred to as a mindshift). Within the domain of software development, previous research has determined that veteran developers experience difficulty making the transition to new forms of development. Although prior research has brought awareness to the problems caused by a mindshift and has provided some insight, it has not answered the question of why software developers have difficulty making the transition. This study begins to answer that question by positing and examining the mindshift learning theory (MLT). The MLT suggests that the degree of perceived novelty of the fundamental concepts that characterize the new mindset will impact learning. Specifically, concepts may be perceived as novel (i.e., not familiar to the learner), changed (i.e., similar to a known concept, but a different meaning in the new context), or carryover (i.e., known concept with a similar meaning in the new context). As an exemplar mindshift learning situation, this study explores the phenomenon in the context of software developers transitioning from traditional to object-oriented (OO) software development. Findings indicate that software developers had higher knowledge scores on the OO concepts they perceived as novel or carryover compared to those they perceived as changed. Thus, developers experienced detrimental interference from their existing traditional software development knowledge structure when trying to learn OO software development. The findings have implications for organizations and individuals as an understanding of mindshifts could mean an easier transition through decreased frustration and a more effective learning process.
Software developers face a constant barrage of innovations designed to improve the development environment. Yet stress/strain among software developers has been steadily increasing and is at an all-time high, while their productivity is often questioned. Why, if these innovations are meant to improve the environment, are developers more stressed and less productive than they should be? Using a combination of cognitive style and person-environment fit theories as the theoretical lens. this study examines one potential source of stress/strain and productivity impediment among software developers. Specifically, this paper examines the fit between the preferred cognitive style of a software developer and his or her perception of the cognitive style required by the job environment, and the effect of that fit on stress/strain and performance. Data collected from a field study of 123 (object-oriented) software developers suggest that performance decreases and stress increases as this gap between cognitive styles becomes wider. Using surface response methodology, the precise fit relationship is modeled. The interaction of the developer and the environment provides explanatory power above and beyond either of the factors separately, suggesting that studies examining strain and performance of developers should explicitly consider and measure the cognitive style fit between the software developer and the software development environment. In practice, managers can use the results to help recognize misfit, its consequences, and the appropriate interventions (such as training or person/task matching).
Seeking to improve software development, many organizations attempt to deploy formalized methodologies. This typically entails substantial behavioral change by software developers away from previous informal practices toward conformance with the methodology. Developers' resistance to such change often results in failure to fully deploy and realize the benefits of the methodology. The present research draws upon theories of intention formation and innovation diffusion to advance knowledge about why developers accept or resist following methodologies. Results from a field study within a large organization indicate that developers' intentions are directly influenced by their perceptions of usefulness, social pressure, compatibility, and organizational mandate. This pattern of intention determinants is quite different from that typically observed in studies of information technology tool adoption, revealing several key differences between the domains of tool versus methodology adoption. Specifically, although organizational mandate had a significant effect on intentions, the strength of its direct influence was the lowest among the four significant constructs, and usefulness, compatibility, and social pressure all influenced intentions directly, above and beyond the effects of organizational mandate. The findings suggest, contrary to popular belief, that an organizational mandate is not sufficient to guarantee use of the methodology in a sustained manner.
Many proposed contingencies regarding the conditions when the use of prototyping will lead to successful system development appear in the literature. Using an industry survey, this exploratory study empirically investigates the effect of certain contingencies on system success. Overall, results indicate that five variables, when combined with prototyping, affect system success (as indicated by user satisfaction): innovativeness of the project, impact of the system on the organization, user participation, number of users, and developer experience with prototyping. These results provide some insight into the proper uses of prototyping to improve system success. The results also indicate that several of the current contingencies, if followed, do not ensure high levels of system success.